Hello Anatolia Trailer

The first documentary by Chrysovalantis Stamelos and the "Hello Anatolia" poject.
A personal journey from New York to Izmir.

[NikephorosPhokas]

This documentary seems cringey, but the full documentary is no longer on Vimeo. How come only Greeks, especially ones with roots in modern Turkey(whose ancestors thus never fought for independence and instead fled for their lives to Greece or elsewhere) love Neo-Ottoman pastiches that emphasize shared music or cuisine but ignore Turkish racism and policies that have reduced the Greek community of Turkey to less than 1, 600 people who have an average age of 65? Isn't it better for a Greek to migrate to say more neutral Israel/France/any other country but Turkey, with no history of racism or genocide or government policies target them, than Turkey, and just deal with the lesser affinity in music and cuisine? The Greek community of Turkey is dying, Turkish political parties like the AKP and CHP are slinging nationalist barbs accusing the other of being weak for allowing Greece to occupy Greek populated islands in the Aegean, Greece is a colony of German-Europe and this the type of embarrassing documentary Greek-American organizations are funding?

This is like a Native American making a documentary praising white America, its culture and history and ignoring the plight of his ancestors! Or could you imagine African Americans making a similar documentary? No, only Greek Neo-Ottomans could stoop to this sniveling level of praising and ignoring the crimes of their oppressor, infact they discovered the oppressor all along is Greek nationalism, as if Greeks/Greece were the imperial power or imperial people... No sooner than Turkey destroyed its Greek community with the forced labor battalions of the Second World War, 1955 pogrom and the 1964 administrative deportations, and the unrelenting rapacious Turkey turned its eye to invading Cyprus and claiming the Greek islands of the Aegean. Today Turkish jets semi-regularly overfly such Greek islands as Farmoksini and Agathonísi. And I know ahistorical Neo-Ottomans like Stamelos love to lay all the blame on the Turkish government if they do ever acknowledge such issues and pretend that the Turkish people are different in their embarrassingly unread ahistorical worldview, but if you actually took a strong stance with gumption and asked Turks of Turkey about such issues, almost all of them would have explained to you that the Greek populated islands are unfairly occupied by Greece, and further that your ancestors were fifth columnist backstabbers who deserved to be driven out and genocided! Taking no political or historical stance is infact taking a historical/political stance, Stamelos. In this case your stance is the stance of praising the oblivion of your people. Disgraceful and an embarrassment to all Greeks, how could the Greek America Foundation produce this apologia? This is like what the ahistorical, apolitical stuff the Turkish Foreign Ministry would bother to fund if Greek-American foundations and Greek-Americans were not losers enough to do this for them!